Can EU Civil Society Elites Burst the Brussels Bubble? Civil Society Leaders’ Career Trajectories

Abstract

The Brussels-based civil society organizations (CSOs) have been conceived by the EU to act as a bridge between the bureaucratic elites and the citizens of Europe. The institutionalized presence of the major EU-based CSOs has, however, called their legitimacy into question, as exemplified by notions such as ‘revolving doors’ implying homogeneous social, educational, and professional backgrounds shared by both EU officials and CSO leaders. This article therefore asks the following questions: To what extent do the leaders of EU-based CSOs merely reproduce the types of capital that mirror those of the political elites in the so-called ‘Brussels bubble’? To what extent do the CSO leaders bring in other sets of capital and forms of recognition that are independent of the Brussels game? How can we explain differences in the salience of EU capital found across policy areas, types of leadership positions, and types of organizations? Empirically, this article qualitatively analyzes the career trajectories of 17 leaders of EU-based peak CSOs that are active in social and environmental policy areas. Despite the highly integrated and institutionalized characteristics shared by all organizations, we find diversity in the composition of the leaders in terms of the extent to which their career trajectories are embedded in the EU arena.

Personalisation at the top of civil societies? Legitimation claims on civil society elites in Europe

“…We have selected the EU as a supra-national context for civil society mobilisation and organising (Johansson and Kalm, 2015;Meeuwisse and Scaramuzzino, 2018), since studies have shown that EU-level population groups are comparable to national level-population groups, due to sufficient similarity in terms of organisational types and representational capacity (see Berkhout et al, 2017;Heylen et al, 2020;Meeuwisse and Scaramuzzino 2017). Also, similar to national civil societies, processes of resource stratification and centralisation have been detected at the EU level (Lindellee and Scaramuzzino, 2020).…”

“…Top civil society leaders are today prominent actors as they are formally and personally charged with the key tasks of maintaining and representing powerful organisations. Over the last several decades, increased resource stratification in European civil societies has led to the disproportionate concentration of political and economic resources in the hands of a small group of large civil society organisations (hereafter CSOs) (Johansson and Uhlin, 2020; Lindellee and Scaramuzzino, 2020). Organisations like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund, and Caritas are examples of major players in their respective contexts.…”

Trajectories of Civil Society Leaders in Italy: Individual Careers, Organizational Structures, and Ideological Affiliations

“…Studies of civil society leaders’ career trajectories are few. While some studies from the US have focused on the career trajectories of executive leaders in the non-profit sector (Norris-Tirrell et al, 2018; Suarez, 2010), studies of presidents’ or chairpersons’ career trajectories are very few (see Lindellee & Scaramuzzino, 2020 for an example). This might be a consequence of the fact that the presidents are often understood as voluntary or unpaid leaders compared to the employed, paid executive leaders (cf.…”

Civil Society Elites: A Research Agenda

“…In their combined effort, the contributors show that civil society elites can be found across the world. The different contributions also apply various methods to study civil society elites, ranging from statistical analysis of survey data (Gulbrandsen, 2020) via qualitative analysis of biographical data on individual civil society leaders (Lindellee & Scaramuzzino, 2020) to qualitative interviews (the other contributions).…”

“…Four of the contributions (Haryanto, 2020;Lay & Eng, 2020;Lindellee & Scaramuzzino, 2020;Norén-Nilsson & Eng, 2020) draw explicitly on Bourdieu's field theory and the related concept of capital. This approach is useful because it sheds light on relations of conflict and cooperation within civil society and how different power resources are valued, gained and used by civil society actors, thus indicating how and why certain actors emerge as elites.…”